The Walk
by redisaid
Summary: A semi-continuation of The Shirt. Awkward Marceline and Bubblegum. So very awkward.


**The Walk**

It started out slowly, casually even. They went to shows together. That was it. They were friends with a similar taste in music. They might have occasionally blushed at each other when their elbows bumped in the club, but that was it. Really. Totally. They'd wave their goodbyes at the end of the night. Marceline would fly home and Bubblegum would ride off on one of her many birds or that stripey rainbow unicorn thing.

She came over once, unannounced, right in the middle of the day. Marceline had been sleeping. The pink princess wanted to borrow some music. That's what she called it, at least. The varying media of Marceline's collection was too much to explain otherwise. It was kind of weird, honestly, but she didn't think anything of it and handed Bonnibel a few old cassettes she'd dug up centuries ago.

"Were you in the neighborhood or something?" Marceline asked as she handed over the tapes.

Bubblegum snatched them up eagerly and scanned the strange art of their cases as she replied, "Sort of. You—I mean what you'd said about letting me borrow stuff—it was just on my mind."

Marceline didn't exactly consider herself the emotionally mature or perceptive type, but she'd been around a long time. She knew when a friendship was teetering on ruin, walking the fence between someone never wanting to speak to her again and a relationship she wasn't sure she was ready for. That unspoken tension was something she knew well, but had never enjoyed. It took a lot for her to go to the Candy Kingdom later that night. She was already feeling a bit of stage fright. She didn't need even more twisting in her gut, but she went anyway.

A gingerbread house certainly didn't seem like a fitting venue for a rock concert, but Bubblegum did the best she could with what she had. There were posters of the bands. Marceline smirked at her own and went over to inspect it, finding that it was actually an intricate mosaic composed of tiny candies. She was made of pale nonpareils, her hair of black liquorice, her axe bass of red cinnamon candies. Chocolate bats enveloped her as she played, head swung low with strands of liquorice hair flying toward the crowd below.

"Evening madam," a small peppermint said as he caught her snickering at herself. "I was told to show you to the back entrance. You are Marceline the Vampire Queen, correct?"

"Yeah, that's me. Who're you, little dude?" she asked, trying her best not to laugh.

The round little candy didn't seem too comfortable in his get up, or at all happy about it. Some sick person had dressed him in a little black cutoff shirt and tight little jeans with the knees torn out. He looked positively adorable. "Peppermint is what I'm called. I'm the butler of her highness, Princess Bubblegum. She has directed me to have you suitably prepared for your performance, so if you would please, your majesty?"

"Pfft, majesty? Really? Bhahaha!" Marceline replied, unable to hold in her laughter any longer.

She hardly even saw Bonnibel backstage. She was a blur of pink—running around and screaming out orders one second, gushing over the local talent she'd assembled the next. She gave Marceline a quick wave when she ran out to start the show, but ran straight off to address some issue with the lighting after she was done. The vampire was left to watch the acts from the sidelines.

First up was a group of candy rockers, all of them far too cute for their own good. They tried, that much could be said. They certainly tried to appease their ruler and her new found love for all things rock and roll, but candy people are really terrible at trying to be cool. A gumdrop can't exactly look hardcore during an two minute drum solo, but the vampire had to give him a passing grade for effort alone.

It wasn't long before it was time for her set. Any remnant of nerves were forgotten about when she hit the stage. She was rusty, sure, but Marceline did her best to show those little sugar nuggets what real music was about. She got into a groove. She didn't even try to look for Bonni, but she found her anyway. She was beaming up at her from the crowd, not even jumping up and down like an idiot, as she usually did at shows. They locked eyes for a moment, just as Marceline finished a song.

"Gonna slow it down here a sec," she breathed into the microphone.

Her brain screamed at her, but her fingers had already begun to pluck out the lurid melody. Her voice hesitated, just barely, but it too followed. A love song. She hadn't sung a love song in decades, centuries—she didn't even know. Her eyes were the only part of her that seemed to be able to obey her brain. They didn't go looking for Bonni again, at least not until the song was over. By then, she was long gone.

The crowd roared for an encore, but Marceline just waved sheepishly and showed herself back to the shadows of the wings. She hid amongst them, an invisible form, only noticeable from the bass that floated about her. Her head swam so much that she couldn't really think. She barely heard the other bands. Their music was a sudden discord, meshing with the echo of a throbbing heart that Marceline still excepted to hear in her chest, but did not. The only clear thought she could pick out was the one that told her not to do this to herself yet again. It was too late for that.

She welcomed the silence when it was finally over.

"Wanna get out of here?" Bonni was staring up at her, tired but smiling.

"How can you see me?" Marceline had to ask as she became visible yet again.

The candy princess pointed to her bass and the strap the held it about her. Her pink finger followed it up to Marceline's shoulder. "I didn't invite the Floating Sentient Bass. He doesn't look much like that anyway. If I remember correctly, he is primarily blue in color."

"And he sucks major balls," the vampire retorted.

"Is everything all right, Marceline? You didn't have to perform if you didn't want to, you know. Either way, the crowd loved you," Bubblegum informed her.

Marceline tried to respond with her best casual hair flip. "I'm cool. It's just been a while since I've been out there under the spotlight, you know? You mentioned getting out of here?"

"There's an entrance on the other side of the street the fans haven't found yet. We can use it to sneak past them if we hurry," the princess offered.

Marceline had never been much for signing autographs anyway. Soon enough, she and Bubblegum had slipped out into an alley.

"Is there, like, a coffee shop or something we can go to—or a diner? Do candy people even do twenty-four hour anything?" Marceline begged as the princess scouted the exit onto a the street.

"Hmm. There's an ice cream shop that's open pretty late," the princess said as she beckoned her vampire friend forward.

"Good enough. Your treat, right?"

Bonni tried her hardest to frown over her shoulder at that, but it just turned into a grin. "I guess I owe you. What if they don't have anything red?"

Marceline shrugged. "Then you'll still owe me."

The streets of the Candy Kingdom were quiet. Most of its people weren't much for any sort of nightlife. Marceline and Bubblegum were left to walk alone down the subdued colors of its streets. Well, Bubblegum was anyway.

"Why do you have to do that all the time?" she asked the vampire.

"Do what?" Marceline asked, confused.

"Float all the way up there," Bubblegum sighed as gestured to the good three feet of air between the vampire and the ground. "Are you incapable of walking these days?"

Determined to prove that she was indeed capable, the pale woman landed gracefully upon the sugary earth and danced her way to the princess' side. "I'm a walking master. You don't even know what these feet can do, Bonni."

Bubblegum laughed at her display. "You seem like you're feeling better."

Marceline nodded as she lied, "I guess I just had a little freakout. It happens sometimes. No big. It was fun rocking out and all, but I don't think I was really prepared for it, you know?"

"Sort of, but I'll certainly accept your explanation. I'm just glad to see that you are indeed capable of typical bipedal locomotion."

"Pssh, why?" the vampire wondered.

"So that I might do this with ease," Bubblegum said. She snatched up Marceline's hand with her own. It was soft, small, and warm—so warm.

"Oh...okay."


End file.
